Thom Hartmann, appearing on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” attributed Cumulus’ decision to drop Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity mostly to a simple business decision in a radio business where it’s increasingly advantageous to own both your talent and your distribution channels. Hence, Cumulus wants its own guys in its afternoon/evening slots. In this version of the story, Media Matters’ Limbaugh boycott, in which liberals harangue anyone who advertises on the show as only liberals can, is just a ideological sugar high for a bunch of fightin’ liberals in between President Obama’s sporadic fightin’ liberal declarations.

THOM HARTMANN: David Brock and Media Matters were leading the boycott Limbaugh crusade, which did presumably some damage to Limbaugh’s show. I can tell you it did a lot of damage to progressive talk radio, because a lot of advertisers, right across the board, said just pull me out of all talk radio. I don’t know Limbaugh’s numbers, but I do know that, on our side, progressive talk radio took a hit as a consequence.

It makes sense that, when you make advertising on talk radio treacherous for advertisers, advertisers who were inclined to the talk radio format would just hightail it outta there. When that happens, it’s not the Limbaughs or the Hannitys that bear the brunt, but the more fragile liberal talk hosts, who have never figured out how to get enough people to listen to their free product to make it profitable.

Full disclosure: I worked for Cumulus as a morning radio host in the D.C. area in 2012.